Giles comments on People who want to save the world - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Giles 15 May 2011 12:44AM

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Comment author: Giles 14 May 2011 04:38:34AM 1 point [-]

Post any "meta" (i.e. anything that's not "I want to save the world") under here to keep things tidy. Thanks.

Comment author: nhamann 14 May 2011 06:46:32AM *  13 points [-]

"Save the world" has icky connotations for me. I also suspect that it's too vague for there to be much benefit to people announcing that they would like to do so. Better to discuss concrete problems, and then ask who is interested/concerned with those problems and who would like to try to work on them.

Comment author: Giles 15 May 2011 06:26:59PM 1 point [-]

I hate to say it, but the icky connotations are sort of the point. I'm interested in people who want to save the world enough to overcome the icky factor.

I realise that "Lonely Dissent" is essentially a troll's manifesto, and I apologise. But I'm publicly committing to stop writing trollish LW posts.

Comment author: Giles 14 May 2011 04:54:42AM 0 points [-]

I'll start with a quick clarification:

  • Yes, "saving the world" is deliberately vague. It will mean different things to different people.
  • Saving the world isn't a yes/no thing. Some good outcomes can be better than others. Think of it as a rough utility function.
  • This doesn't imply total altruism; you can want to save the world within the constraints that the rest of your life will allow.
  • To help save the world, you need to be rational. Mainly because it's a really, really hard problem.
Comment author: [deleted] 14 May 2011 10:48:46AM 3 points [-]

To help save the world, you need to be rational. Mainly because it's a really, really hard problem.

Being irrational doesn't prevent one from stumbling upon some technique necessary for world-saving. It just doesn't concentrate the likelihood of finding it in that direction. See for instance the irrationalist list, or Buckminster Fuller.

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